Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Pebble

Two weeks ago I bought a new watch. It is a Pebble (https://getpebble.com). Interestingly cool and worthy is my opinion. I did a lot of research on the kind of wearable technology (not many choices using an iPhone) between Galaxy Gear, Sony and Pebble. The former two do not work with iOS leaving me the only option of Pebble. 

It is a cool looking black watch (that is the color I picked) with just one color to display, like a kindle (eReader). Because of this battery life is really good. Though it advertises of 5-7 days, I observed that 4-5 days is really comfortable. It connects to your phone using Bluetooth which means that your phone battery is gonna drain a bit faster than normal.

How it works is that anything that is a notification on the iPhone is displayed on the watch and apart from this one additional thing that can be controlled is the music on phone (start-stop play-pause). It has a small vibrator too so, if your phone vibrates, so does this (depends on what is set on your phone to vibrate). 

It can support up to 8 apps (very limited but...) that includes watch faces and apps. There is an SDK (Software Development Kit) that will let you program it (not for the non-geeky kind). So, you can keep changing the watch face whenever your mood changes. Some apps that I seen are for running a chrono clock, score etc. Since it has a accelerometer, it can track your hand movement and so, comes really handy to track your calories and activity while running etc.

I own a Bluetooth headset too so this is the coolest feature is that I can put my phone in the bag and just carry the headset and the watch. The watch tells me who is trying to reach me and the headset to communicate. I keep my phone on vibrate mode most of the time without disturbing anyone. I can answer and reject calls from the watch too. Watch faces are just great and I keep changing them very often. 

Overall, priced at 150$, I would say its worthy of the price. I am not too tech savvy about the features it has but this works for me, so I am good.

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